The BBC understands that Twitter judged this to be a violation of its rules against abusive behaviour.

The restriction appears to only be effective against the @RealAlexJones account, which has 890,000 followers.

Mr Jones has since posted a video in which he discusses the move to a separate @Infowars feed – with about 431,000 followers – which he described as being a “sub-account”.

Conspiracy theories

Mr Jones has previously been widely criticised for repeating claims that the 9/11 attacks in New York were staged by the US government.

He has also claimed that many of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre were actors. The parents of two children shot in that attack are suing him for defamation, saying he had made “false, cruel, and dangerous assertions”.

Apple’s iTunes, Facebook and YouTube removed podcasts and other content by Mr Jones and InfoWars from their services last week.

Techcrunch has reported that, according to the terms of the suspension, Mr Jones will still be able to use his account to view and search for other people’s content, but he will not be able to tweet, like, comment or retweet material.